I found, at a later day, many droll theories broached in France, more especially in the Chamber of Deputies, on the subject of our own great success in the useful enterprises. As is usual, in such cases, any reason but the true one was given. At the period of our arrival in Europe, the plan of connecting the great lakes with the Atlantic had just been completed, and the vast results were beginning to attract attention in Europe. At first, it was thought, as a matter of course, that engineers from the old world had been employed. This was disproved, and it was shown that they who laid out the work, however skilful they may have since become by practice, were at first little more than common American surveyors. Then the trifling cost was a stumbling-block, for labour was known to be far better paid in America than in Europe; and lastly, the results created astonishment. Several deputies affirmed that the cause of the great success was owing to the fact, that in America we trusted such things to private competition, whereas, in France, the government meddled with everything. But it was the state governments, (which indeed alone possess the necessary means and authority,) that had caused most of the American canals to be constructed. These political economists knew too little of other systems to apply a clever saying of their own--_Il y a de la Rochefoucald, et de la Rouchefoucald_. All governments do not wither what they touch. Some Americans have introduced steam-boats on the rivers of France, and on the lakes of Switzerland and Italy. We embarked in one, after passing two delectable nights at the Hotel d'Angleterre. The boat was a frail-looking thing, and so loaded with passengers, that it appeared actually to stagger under its freight. The Seine has a wide mouth, and a long ground-swell was setting in from the Channel. Our Parisian cockneys, of whom there were several on board, stood aghast. "Nous voici en pleine mer!" one muttered to the other, and the annals of that eventful voyage are still related, I make no question, to admiring auditors in the interior of France. The French make excellent seamen when properly trained; but I think, on the whole, they are more thoroughly landsmen than any people of my acquaintance, who possess a coast. There has been too much sympathy with the army to permit the mariners to receive a proper share of the public favour.